I still think there are temperature regulating feedbacks that counter CO2 buildups. Like increased cloud formation reducing solar inputs. I'd rather we start building lots of nuclear power plants than find out first hand how well these temp regulators work. Hydrocarbons are too valuable to burn. I'd rather we use them for chemical feedstocks for plastics and such.

elchip:If we exclude 1998 as an outlier, do we see more warming, or a stall?

I don't know, but statistics doesn't work that way. Or at least doesn't have to here. The problem isn't that we need to exclude the outlier, the problem is that idiots like TFA's retarded author need to stop cherry-picking tiny segments of the data set to try and prove a point that doesn't exist.

The warming trend has stalled a bit most likely due to the unrest in Somalia giving us a few more years before the climate really goes to shiat, but we can't count on them to hold oil tankers hostage for us forever. It's time the developed nations realize they have to take things into their own hands, and put more funding into their own piracy career training programs.

Those four numbers cause my bullshiat alarm to ring in climate threads.

Whatever. This data point is just a data point like all the other data points on the graph and we all know trends, not a data point, are what's meaningful.

/ ow... the human brain isn't meant to twist that way...

If we exclude 1998 as an outlier, do we see more warming, or a stall?

Someone actually crunched the math. If you exclude 1998 and start at 1999 or if you include 1997 as the starting point of that set instead of 1998, then the trend essentially becomes positive again. Only if you start at 1998 does the data look like it's going to stall.

mark12A:I still think there are temperature regulating feedbacks that counter CO2 buildups. Like increased cloud formation reducing solar inputs. I'd rather we start building lots of nuclear power plants than find out first hand how well these temp regulators work. Hydrocarbons are too valuable to burn. I'd rather we use them for chemical feedstocks for plastics and such.

If I was God, that is how I would have done it.They tell me I am the spittin' image, so,,,

zackthebass:Here's the graph they're going by, as linked in the article:[image]Nope, no trends there!

You'll notice that the graph levels off after 1998 to the present, which is what was talked about in the article. So either the warming trend is only a fraction of what is was in the drastic 1980s, or the warming trend will actually be flat for a few more years.

I don't suppose five years of recession could have anything to do with the so-called stall.

But to correct the factual errors and false impressions given by the article I would like to point out:

* The "stall" is only a stall relative to one year, 1998, which was the hottest year on record. Seeing as super-hot record years tend to be scattered more or less randomly through history, this is neither surprising nor significant. What is significant is that ALL of the last 330 months are above the average and the base line, which is a running average that is adjusted every 15 years, has risen.

* The climatologists predicted a period of cooling would begin in 2009. It did. They based this on known climate cycles. These are separate from the general warming trend predicted by climatologists based on increasing GHG in the atmosphere. Also, they tend to be fairly large swings so they swamp the still small increases of year to year warmth.

The article gives the impressions that scientists are being disingenuous if not dishonest, but they aren't. On the contrary, they have been frank about what they do and do not know and were actually ahead of the denialists in predicting this cooling period.

When the economies of North America and Europe recover from the recession, they will resume pumping GHG. Meanwhile, the economies of China and India have slumped slightly. Since China is now the number one producer of GHG and pollution (aerosols that create a brown haze of smog that is visible from space), and since the US and India are next, we can expect moderate growth in the mean global temperature from anthropogenic sources for a while longer.

There may also be natural factors at play, seeing as the IPCC report and climatologists acknowledge the existence of natural forcing agents both pro- and anti- warming.

The climatologists have been totally frank and honest in their statements about these and other mysteries or fluctuations of climate change.

Mistaking a glimpse of sunlight for the end of the storm is a common error. This is very similar.

I will go on pointing out the foolishness of calling the failure to match or beat a random annual record a disprove of the global long-range trend as long as it takes.

It's nice to see the non-ideological doubting Thomases are beginning to come around based on the evidence of their own experience of extreme weather (even though this may be anecdotal and thus not the best evidence, that being largely understood ONLY by climatologists and not by random members of the general public, or denialists with no scientific or climatological training.

I'm also glad to see evangelicals becoming concerned. Even though they are not very happy with what science tells them and thus prone to denying well-established scientific theories and facts, they have enough of a sense that God demands stewardship and not quietism of Christians (and Jews and Muslims, among others). As the parable of the Good Steward teaches, it is not enough to bury your talent in the ground and passively return God's investment intact. You should be actively using the riches God gives you to increase the wealth with which you are intrusted. Liberal Christians have believed this for decades, even before the 1960s. The Good Fight is not a passive resistance against evil--it is a struggle to make life happier and better for all, even sinners.

This is the kind of religion humanity can use. It pursues a better world rather than waiting for the New Jerusalem to drop down from heaven as big as the Moon.

This article, like a steady stream of Denialist propaganda, misrepresents the opinions, actions and motivations of scientists, as well as the facts. Who needs another piece of flim-flam like that?